


Moving On

by Baby_Spinach



Series: After the Goodbye [2]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Happy Ending, Pining, Post-Season/Series 04, Season/Series 04 Spoilers, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 14:23:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19021723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baby_Spinach/pseuds/Baby_Spinach
Summary: Chloe tries to move on. It's the reasonable, healthy thing to do. In theory.





	Moving On

**Author's Note:**

> Confirmed mutual pining, y'all, now with a happier ending! This may also be the first time I've choked up over my own writing.

Chloe knows that pining is useless. She’s nodded agreeably at Linda’s gently veiled suggestions to move on. After all, Lucifer is a king. He’s busy re-asserting order and possibly preventing an apocalypse. What are the chances that he would risk a topside visit just for her, Chloe Decker, a nobody?

As time continues to run its inexorable course, she clings to this singular truth.

*

The first year of his absence is all about learning to be a regular detective again, without an infuriatingly childish-but-weirdly-insightful partner nattering nonstop beside her. In the daytime, Chloe catches herself looking over her shoulder on a daily basis, half-expecting an over-dressed, overly-tall man to be gleefully touching anything that catches his interest. At nighttime, she lies wide-awake, restless and heartsick, sending desperate prayers into the shapeless void.

_I love you. Come back to me. Let the world burn._

Such thoughts are inarguably selfish and indulgent, but Chloe can’t bring herself to care.

*

The second year is a little easier. Trixie’s dizzying growth in maturity is almost enough to keep Chloe fully occupied. But as fast as her daughter grows, she still asks about Lucifer.

“When’s he coming back?” Trixie asks out of the blue one afternoon, as she works on homework at the kitchen counter.

Chloe bites her cheek, hard, before adopting the conciliatory parental expression. “I don’t think he is, monkey. He’s needed somewhere and he can’t visit us anymore.”

“Why didn’t you ask him to stay? He never says no to you.”

She swallows the sudden lump in her throat. “I did ask. I begged, actually. But some things are bigger than just the two of us.”

Trixie rests her chin in her hand, eyes downcast. “I miss him.”

“So do I, baby.”

That night, Chloe modifies her prayer a little.

_Come back to me. The little urchin demands it. Come back, you damn, noble coward. I love you._

*

His name is Mike. He’s sweet, funny, considerate, with beautiful brown curls that tumble over his forehead above a pair of warm, dark eyes. Chloe enjoys her evening with him. He gives her a sweet, chaste kiss before bidding her goodnight and driving off in his respectable Honda.

Chloe kicks off her chafing heels and falls into bed. Perhaps he’s the right one to build her life with. He’d probably be the uncomplicated, white-picket-fence type, the kind of man to kiss her good morning every day without fail, to patiently listen and sympathize with her every thought or grievance. Chloe couldn’t realistically ask for better.

Before she forgets, she texts him about a second date.

*

Moving on really is the right thing to do. On the fourth year and the hundred-and-twentieth day, Chloe finally arrives at a point where she truly believes it.

Sweet Mike hasn’t worked out after all, but he’d had a tough predecessor to match up to. Chloe doesn’t agonize about it as she once would have. With Dan, she’d exhaustively replayed every key moment of their relationship in a fruitless attempt to pinpoint the crucial moment she could have handled differently. Ultimately, it’d been a waste of valuable brainpower.

Chloe isn’t quite sure what’s changed, but she likes this new version of herself. She’ll either find a life partner or she won’t. She already has her unnervingly fast-growing daughter and a fulfilling job that she excels at. And she no longer looks over her shoulder or prays into the unfeeling night.

Lucifer’s absence isn’t a gaping hole in her chest anymore, but rather a tender, ever-present bruise over her heart.

She cherishes it.

*

Chloe notices light crow’s feet at her temples one morning. Though she knows it’s impossible, she could swear that they weren’t there yesterday. Well, it has been five years and a week. It’s about time, really.

_But Lucifer won’t have aged a day._

This sudden, undeniable realization comes out of nowhere and throws her entire world off balance. Unbidden tears abruptly pool in her eyes, as if they’d been simply waiting for an excuse.  

“Mom! Have you seen my calculator?” A perpetually irritated voice calls from somewhere outside the bathroom.

Chloe quickly swipes across her eyes and sniffs hard, just once.

“It’s on the kitchen counter, baby. You left it there yesterday.”

She finishes up her light makeup routine, forces a natural-looking smile from her reflection, and leaves for work.

*

Really, it’s for the best that Lucifer doesn’t visit. He’d always need to return to his celestial duty, and the endless goodbyes would probably drive the both of them to bitterness and heartbreak. They’d only be repeatedly tearing open a barely scabbed-over wound, never letting it properly heal.

This way, she hasn’t had to sacrifice part of her life to endless anticipation of his next reappearance. Lucifer is gone, and she’ll never see him again. Chloe hasn’t completely made peace yet with such a harsh, unyielding truth, but she likes to think she’s getting there.

*

On the fifth year and two hundredth day, Lucifer comes back.

It’s a rare stormy evening. Trixie is spending the night at a friend’s, leaving Chloe to the pleasures of a quiet, dark apartment. She reads a book and sips red wine under the singular warm light of the lamp beside the couch.

Chloe turns a page, and the noise is unusually harsh and rasping in the tranquility of her home. A low rumble of thunder briefly murmurs outside.

A minuscule breeze, almost imperceptible, lightly ruffles her loose hair. Gooseflesh suddenly erupts across the back of her neck. Chloe’s breathing hitches. She carefully sets down her wine, scared to move even that much.

She almost doesn’t want to turn. If he isn’t there, she’s not sure she’d be able to handle the crushing disappointment.  

“Hello, Detective.”

Chloe turns.

His eyes shine a brief, vivid scarlet before he blinks and returns them to their normal inky brown. He wears a white dress shirt rolled up at the elbows, with the collar loose and open. His slacks are neat and pressed, his fancy designer shoes as shiny as ever. His stubble is neatly groomed. Aside from his hair, which remains the same length but is now loose and richly curled, their balcony farewell could have occurred just last night.

He truly hasn’t aged a day.

Chloe’s limbs are frozen, though she still manages to tremble. Her throat is suddenly dry. 

The silence broadens between them. Lucifer watches her intently, gauging her reaction like one would with an untamed animal. Chloe finally settles on awkward casual, her default setting.

“It’s… been a while,” she says, and immediately regrets it. But it’s too late to course-correct now. “Five years and--”

“--two hundred days?” he finishes.

She nods.

He smiles, gentle and melancholy. “The calculations took some time, but I’m glad they’re correct.”

And just like that, liquid fire flows through her limbs, thawing the ice that’d kept her rooted to the spot.

He’s here. Her Lucifer. It’s all real.

His next words pour out in a rush, pleading and conciliatory. “I just want you to know Detective, that if I’d come any sooner, I wouldn’t have been strong enough not to stay. You can’t imagine how I--”

She’s suddenly across the room and in his arms, cutting off his stream of unnecessary justifications. She buries her face into his crisp shirt and the comforting warmth just underneath. He smells of smoke and juniper. Her Lucifer.

They wasted so much time in their years of working together, and Chloe is not about to waste a moment more. She turns upward, hungry to meet his lips with hers. But to her surprise, he gently stops her with a feather-light caress of her cheek.

“Chloe, before we…” His jaw clenches a little, the words heavy and labored but tragically necessary. “I can’t stay. Not for long. It would… always be like this.”

It’s true. For the rest of her days, she’d have to sacrifice a portion of herself to Lucifer Morningstar. She’d be forced to mourn him again and again, right up until that next fleeting visit. Both their hearts would slowly break, little by little, as they stole mere moments of what should have been a full and wonderful life by each other’s side.

But as Chloe looks into the eyes of the man she loves with every fiber of her being, the years of carefully-cultivated rationalizations melt away like inconsequential snowflakes before a blazing inferno. Despite all of her so-called reason and logic, she was still completely and utterly wrong. She’ll gladly endure the inevitable pain, every drop of it, and regret nothing.

Because he’s worth it.

“I know. It’s okay,” she says with complete certainty.

Lucifer smiles in equal parts gratitude and disbelief. His hand sweetly brushes a lock of hair from her upturned face.

“Well then, let’s make the most of it, shall we?” That sly, salacious lilt to his voice is just as she remembers. Her heart swells so much it might burst.

 _God,_ she’s missed him.

They both lean in to bridge the gap, beginning their first of many little interludes in paradise.


End file.
